Columns

Ghosts. I guess we’re never very far from them. You can’t really see them, but they’re always there. They’re quiet. Every now and then, one pops up, moves the furniture and leaves. You turn around to see the drapes swish and your life has changed. What was that!? […]

In many American homes in the early 20th century hung a framed poem by Rudyard Kipling, If, which begins with “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you…” and ends with “You’ll be a Man, my son.” […]

Because the shortsighted Hollywood film industry did not want anything to do with the new invention called television in the mid-1940s, the radio industry took over the burgeoning medium. New York became the dominant center for the first decade of TV, as the radio studios were located in Manhattan. […]

In Syracuse New York in 1967, my dad’s RCA console TV received three broadcast channels. One of them was the local PBS station. That’s where I first saw Duck Soup, the classic Marx Brothers comedy. […]

There are those wonderful, albeit rare occasions when you are sent a script and immediately a sense of excitement overtakes you. Such was the case in 1997 when Wes Anderson sent me Rushmore. I felt so…lucky! […]